Data Visualization Final Project

Gian Mella

Topic Introduction

In this project, I used NBA data to create my visualizations. The dataset I pulled from lists every NBA player who played over 10 minutes per game in last year’s playoffs (2021-22 NBA season). This table shows a wide variety of data for each player, such as per game stats, shooting percentages, and some advanced statistics as well. There are 152 players in the dataset.

I chose this data mostly because I’m a big fan of basketball and also of Jimmy Butler. Butler had a great playoff run last year, and as a fan of his I wanted to use visualizations to see just how good he was last year. I compared his statistics to both the general field and also against the top players from last year’s playoffs.

My data comes from Stathead: https://stathead.com/tiny/hXqZ6.

Visualization 1

For arguably the 4 best players in last year’s playoffs, this visualization illustrates each player’s quartile rank in 5 different advanced metrics.

Visualization 2

Here we have a comparison between Jimmy Butler and the other 9 top PPG scorers from last year’s playoffs. For 6 different types of shot percentages, this plot shows his percentage in each one vs. what the average of the rest of the top 10 was.

Visualization 3

This visualization displays games played against win shares for the players in our dataset. Butler is highlighted on the graph.